Brings together scholars who use literary interpretation and discourse analysis to read 18th-century British philosophy in its historical context. This work analyses how the philosophers of the Enlightenment viewed their writing; and, how their institutional positions as teachers and writers influenced their understanding of human consciousness.

Introduction, Christina Lupton, Alexander Dick; Chapter 1 Philosophy/Non-Philosophy and Derrida's (Non) Relations with Eighteenth-Century Empiricism, Nicholas Hudson; Chapter 2 Locke's Desire, Jonathan Brody Kramnick; Chapter 3 Philosophy and Politeness, Moral Autonomy and Malleability in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, Joseph Chaves; Chapter 4 Reid, Writing and the Mechanics of Common Sense, Alexander Dick; Chapter 5 Preposterous Hume, Mark Blackwell; Chapter 6 Aesthetic Sensibility and the Contours of Sympathy Through Hume's Insertions to the Treatise, Adam Budd; Chapter 7 David Hume and Jane Austen on Pride: Ethics in the Enlightenment, Eva M. Dadlez; Chapter 8 Hume, Religion, Literary Form: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, John Richetti; Chapter 9 The Epistemology of Genre, Jonathan Sadow; Chapter 10 The Primitive in Adam Smith's History, Maureen Harkin; Chapter 11 Can Julie Be Trusted? Rousseau and the Crisis of Constancy in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, Nancy Yousef; Chapter 12 After the Summum Bonum: Novels, Treatises and the Enquiry After Happiness, Brian Michael Norton; Chapter 13 Music vs Conscience in Wordsworth's Poetry, Adam Potkay;